tvashtarkatena

Chain saw fairies have been known to fly in to certain neglected trails on occasion I hear.

Colleen has now joined the Order of the Long Shoes.

When this is in your rear view, you know the shit just got real: [video:youtube]ljh8_q-DmuI

Fortunatley, no road was ever built to the Plummer Mt. Mine I refer to. I was surprised to come upon a helo dropped 'superbag' of new plastic piping up there in 2006. Since then, Washington Trails Association, a local advocacy group, worked to ensure a wilderness future for this island of private land within the GPW: WTA saves GPW from future copper mining Here's a stewardship organization that seems to be a bit more deserving of an environmentalist's donations. BTW, the Chelan PUD still maintains the right to land a chopper at the Lyman Lake Snotel site (in the heart of the GPW) 4 times a year. Given this and many other reasonable exceptions to motorized vehicle ban in wilderness areas, WW's suite looks even more like a complete waste of public time, money, and energy. If only WW would content themselves in aggressively wafting sage smoke at passing A6s from Whidbey.

After Apollo 8 rounded the moon, NASA spent the next two missions testing the LEM in both earth and lunar orbit before landing on the moon. Apollo 10 must have sucked in a way - all dressed up and no shore passes... It would be fun as hell to watch Tito's Spam in a Can barrel race round Mars actually happen. No one's ever been more than half a million miles away from earth - watching the planet recede into a blue dot has got to be a mind bender.

Lower Winthrop seracs are at 7000+

2 crews, plus a third, bonus crew a bit later on.

For those of you interested in how just much a standard Marsianaut eats, drinks, pees, and poops per day: Inspiration Mars Feasibility Analysis "Given the limitations of the mission, this will certainly be reduced by eliminating or reducing items such as toilet paper, tape, dry wipes, detergent, disinfectant and clothing." The "minimal clothing" paragraph caught my eye. Hopefully for us viewers, the couple will be of lower rather than upper middle age. The mission proposes to use a modified DragonX capsule for the crew and Heavy rocket, neither of which are currently available. Cost estimates being bandied about run around 2 B.

Lower Winthrop Gl just over St. Elmo's Pass offers some terrain.

Light and small can be kind of gimmicky, but be able to ski a 6 day traverse with a 40L pack is kind of a cool trick, too. Successful small companies tend to get bigger. Small companies can also make crap as well as larger ones. I tend to focus more on the retailer - small local shops who provide good service should be rewarded with repeat business so they can stick around and continue to raise the bar.

I haven't yet been able to decipher the original thesis here, but... Modern gear rocks. All around or out of town, goin up or goin down, in Kermit Green or Charcoal Slate, whip it good, it's not too late. If the enjoyment of not being cold, injured, or dead constitutes manufactured performance anxiety, hand me a Xanax or comparably marketed medication.

And speaking of irony - its perfectly legal to air drop mining supplies on Miner's Ridge, right smack in the middle of the Glacier Peak Wilderness (although on a private parcel), but illegal to airdrop construction materials for preservation of an historical lookout.

I don't use the term "common sense" to support my viewpoints, as I consider my self neither common nor particularly sense-making, but then I don't get too wrapped around the axle when someone else does, either. While we're on the topic of effective communication: picking apart another's rhetorical micro-choices, or lack thereof, doth not a winning debate make. Bottom line is this: Washingtonians overwhelmingly love our last remaining 14 lookouts, and support their preservation. The WA Act does not require Green Mt to be torn down as a sanction. Appropriately narrow legislation can (and should, IMO) save the Green Mt. Lookout. And finally, WW has a habit of bullshitting its supporters. As a board member of a non-profit advocacy group, I take particular exception to this method of duping the public out of its hard earned donation dollars, and I question WW's overall impact on habitat and wildlife - which I'd estimate has been not much over the years, given its focus on letter of the law trivia (at the great expense of historical preservation), rather than substantive action. I'd say WW appears to be little more than a jobs program for a handful of folks who care little for regional values, honesty or substantive action. For anyone actually interested in preserving nature, it seems there many other organizations that would put donations to better use.

That is all.

Does the GMLO predate Wilderness designation and therefore deserve protection via the HPA and WA? Yes. Did the FS use a chopper to rebuild GMLO? Yes. Did the FS have a good reason to do so? Yes. The structure as originally restored was unstable and would have created a huge debris field - not exactly an environmentalists wet dream, had they not taken that action. Our massive storms after 2000 changed the rules, as Mother Nature is want to do on occasion. I reckon folks in states a thousand miles away probably never got that memo. Must they, or should they, tear down the lookout, risking greater environmental damage, huge expense (particularly with the road washed out), and loss of one of the last few remaining historical treasures? No. Does one need to be aware of or give two shits about the Muir hut's issues or lack thereof to care about Washington's last remaining historical lookouts? No again. Is Washington's 1984 Wilderness Act, which codifies our citizen's democratic desire to preserve our 14 (out of hundreds of original) remaining lookouts, possibly in conflict with the 1964 Wilderness Act? Arguably. Can legislation provide for legal exceptions to the No Power Equipment rule of the 1964 WA? Yes, there is much precedence here. Rep. Rick Larsen is pushing for just such an exception for Green Mountain. Wilderness Watch is fighting it, of course, incorrectly characterizing it as a Republican ploy. I've noticed they play really fast and loose with their website rhetoric and basic facts, but hey, honesty is for whimps, right? And finally, how many of you here have ever even been to Green Mountain?

Stay in Oregon. Seems like the only folks who want to tear down our historical treasures have never bothered to visit them. Most don't even live in WA. Take local control of your community and the good things in it. There will always be outsiders who want to burn it down.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket: for 128M you get twice the lift of the Space Shuttle. You could probably do the proposed trip for the cost of the Cassini probe - 3 billion or so. Space comes cheaper these days with so many off the shelf components. Plus, what a reality show. No space walks, though; no spacesuits. Ya fix it from the inside or not at all. I wouldn't laugh it off. They have a tight window though: a low fuel trajectory like 2018 only comes around every 15 years.

Holy shit, a 2.6 m cube. That's one SMALL bedroom. The plan is to send a married couple. Free divorce services enroute?

The private 2018 trip does not propose to land on Mars, just swing round it and head right back home.

Ban shrooms, though. No need to increase paranoia risk above the risk that the crew actually wakes up to what's most likely in store for them. Actually, though, they can probably make it fine. One Russki's already spent a total of 801 days in space, 437 days in one go, so the 501 days isn't such a huge leap. The Mars500 crew of six spent 520 days couped up together on earth - but the living space was 3x what these guys would have on this trip. If you don't land the navigation is straightforward and the fuel requirement is low. Stick a booster onto a couple of Destiny ISS modules and blast the fuck off. If you're gonna stuff 6 guys into one of these things

Such a voyage requires sacrifice. LSD Sunday Morning Services Only. Talk to the Reverend. The largest Atlas payload is 5 m in diameter. Basically, you're sealed in a 2 story bedroom for 501 days with your crew mates. I suppose every now and then you could crawl around the outside for a change of scenery. I would think enormous amounts of vaporization would be essential to crew survival. The garden would likely be the crew's number one priority during cruise phase. I guess these guys are just gonna take the rads like real men. They're DNA's gonna look like swiss cheese.

I was being chased by a guy with a knife, actually. I free fell about 20 feet before sticking the landing with my left leg, which polevaulted the rest of me downslope another 80 ft or so in a most confusing fashion. The only thing that kept Josh from following me over was my trap door act. No matter how careful you are, zero viz iz what it iz. The ski down wasn't too bad. My ski bases got it worse than I did.

The feathered bangs and scrotee have already pegged my hate meter. He did apologize for being a moron - which is further than most tea scroters would go.

READ THE CONSTITUTION!!!!!!!!!

What I emit while biking would kill his whole family.